Halloween Craft For Kids: How To Make Salt Dough Pumpkin Decorations

Grab the kids and get stuck in with this easy and inexpensive craft 🎃

To inspire you to get crafty with your kids this Halloween, we asked some of the best craft bloggers to share their easy makes. Find other Halloween ideas here.

Many parents enjoy spending time with their kids at Christmas making salt dough decorations so these spookier versions of the classic festive ornaments are a perfect place to get started with your Halloween decorating.

Salt dough is an inexpensive way to try modelling with your kids, explains blogger Jen Walshaw, of Mum in the Madhouse. To create her Halloween shapes, she picked up a set of cookie cutters from Tesco – a snip a 99p – but you could freestyle the shapes if you don’t have cutters to hand or fancy creating something more unique.

Jen opted to make pumpkin, bat, and ghost-shaped decorations with her children.

Once cooked, she hung her decorations from a twig centrepiece, decorated with orange fairylights, which make the added sequins shine. You could also pin them to the edges of shelves, hang them from pot-plants around the house, or thread them onto a string like a strand of scary bunting.

What you need:

- 2 cups of flour

- 1 cup of salt

- 1 tablespoon lemon juice

- Orange paint (and black/white if you’re making bats and ghosts too)

- Sequins (optional)

- String.

JenWalshaw

How to make them:

1. To make the salt dough, mix the flour, salt, and lemon juice. Add warm water (one cup overall), slowly until you get a firm dough. Knead the dough, until it becomes more flexible.

2. Roll out the dough and cut your decorations out with a cookie cutter. Make a small hole at the top for the ribbon to go through once it’s dry. An easy way to do this is using a straw.

3. Cook the dough at a low temperature in the oven for three hours, then leave overnight before painting or decorating. Jen’s advice is to use the lowest possible temperature in your oven.

4. To decorate, use acrylic paint to make them colourful, and add sequins if your kids (or you!) can’t resist a bit of the sparkly stuff.

If you want a bit more guidance, watch how to make salt-dough decorations here or read Jen’s full instructions here.